Garden is about five metres by five, mostly paved, and we produce maybe four litres of kitchen scraps a week plus a bit of garden waste. Neighbours are close on two sides so I'm wary of anything that smells or attracts rats. A tumbler is around 90 and takes up little space, a pallet bin is free but bigger and open at the bottom. Which one actually works for that volume?
For four litres a week in a small paved garden with close neighbours, honestly neither is ideal, and a worm bin might be the better answer. Kitchen scraps alone are exactly what worms want, it takes up less space than a tumbler, it produces no smell if you run it right, and it's fully sealed against rats.
If you want to pick between the two you named:
At your volume the tumbler will take five or six months per batch. That's fine if you're patient.
It is genuinely low effort once established — maybe five minutes a week. The main thing is not overfeeding in the first two months while the population builds.
Hadn't seriously considered worms because I assumed it was a whole hobby. Sounds like it fits my situation better than either bin.
The rat question is really a food question, not a bin question. Rats come for cooked food, meat, dairy and bread. A pallet bin with only veg trimmings, coffee and garden waste is rarely a problem; the same bin with last night's leftovers is a restaurant. If you're disciplined about inputs, the open bin is fine even with close neighbours.
Agreed, with one addition — line the bottom and sides with hardware cloth if you build the pallet bin. Costs about 20 and removes the whole worry.
Cheap middle option nobody mentions: a plastic dalek-style bin, often subsidised by councils for 15-25. Open bottom, lid on top, about a third of the footprint of a pallet bin, and it handles that volume without complaint.
Checked and mine does a subsidised scheme. That plus a small worm bin might be the whole answer.
Having owned both: the tumbler's real advantage is that it's tidy and you'll actually keep using it. My pallet bin worked better and looked like a mess, and in a small garden overlooked by neighbours that mattered more than I expected.
@drainfield_dave · 10mo ago
Whichever you pick, the paved garden is the bigger constraint. Compost wants contact with soil so worms and fungi can come up into it. If everything is paved, either put the bin in a raised bed of soil, or accept you're doing a closed system where you supply all the organisms yourself.
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